April

The execution of test runs with autonomous vehicles offers a good opportunity to assess public opinion. To examine public acceptance with objective criteria, the ISTP conducted a panel study with residents from the canton of Schaffhausen, Switzerland. The data collection and the results are presented in a report by Dr. Michael Wicki and Prof. Thomas Bernauer.

ISTP PhD Student David Kretzer will give an online lecture on lighting and crime ("Beleuchtung und Kriminalität"), as part of the "10. Straßenbeleuchtungstage" Symposium, on Thursday, 07. May 2020, at 10.15.

Dennis Kolcava, Lukas Rudolph and Prof. Thomas Bernauer examined public preferences on extraterritorial social and environmental regulation, corporate self-regulation, and the interplay between them. Their analysis, based on a vignette survey experiment in Switzerland, was published in Journal of European Public Policy.

Working from home, distance learning, online shopping – many African countries cannot easily adopt rich nations’ measures against the coronavirus. ISTP member Prof. Isabel Günther calls for international solidarity in the pandemic. (Re-post from ETH Zukunftsblog)

An insightful study on the impact of on-farm storage by Dr. Michael Brander, ETH Prof. Thomas Bernauer and Dr. Matthias Huss highlights the need for greater consideration of improved on-farm storage as a means for reducing severe food insecurity. The results of their study, which is based on a randomized control trial in Tanzania, and data collected through SMS-based mobile phone surveys, were published in Food Policy.

The International Resource Panel (IRP) recently published a compilation of factsheets on Natural Resource Use. The data analysis and the text were prepared by the Swiss Minerals Observatory researchers Livia Cabernard, Stephan Pfister and Prof. Stefanie Hellweg, in collaboration with researchers from the United Nations Environment Programme and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.